I apologize if I misunderstood, but the after the complaints you went on to say that you switched to Eldar, leading me to conclude you switched to Eldar to achieve the effect you desired, e.g. Tau without the assault weakness.

The fact that they have Infantry backed up by tanks and good fliers could be said about almost all other armies

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Seems that for some maneuvering to shoot or overwatch is just not an option.

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In an ideal world, yes that would be the best use for Mech FWs.

How often does your opponent actually let you spend 2 turns setting this up in a position that's worth anything?  Believe me, this was one of the first thyings that occured to me.  It's just not practical though and again, not especially interesting.

Frankly, I dispute that it is not viable or boring.

Forcing a novel playstyle on opponents is something I´m looking forward to, this is what I find fascination about say Siegers or the more radical minor lists like Moscovian´s new Harlequins or Chroma´s Daemon World Horde.

Epic doesn´t need another army that works by keeping your long-range shooting safely back, move one formation into support range and then engage with another.

I´m sure a mixture of foot-FW and Mech FW going for crossfires and screening the advances flanks with OW can be a winner. The key would be taking sufficient numbers, bascically building a 3k army around 4-6 FW formations, with the rest being bascially support for dealing with armour, providing AA and going for Coordinated Fires.

Hena has already done a number of Tau units for Vassal (thanks Hena!), I hope to see them in the next release and can see myself patching the sprites into the current build just to make a few points.

FW with their decent FF, armour and two shooting attacks can be murder if used correctly, I´m sure of that!

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Y'know, if no-one wants to test this stuff to see if it's overpowered (and I'm sure that Irondeath's 6 FW formations would push the edge of how many Fire Warriors one would see in a 3k list), then it's all theoryhammering, both the pro and con arguments.  Frankly, until someone PROVES the FF4+ is unbalanced, I'm going to keep pushing for it.  I've mathhammered that FF5+ is a little weaker than I'd trust to a position-clearing assault, but if supported, it's do-able.

I'm too busy this summer to travel, otherwise I'd be landing on Jav98 or Cuban Commissar for some serious playtesting.  I may still TRY to do so before school starts in the fall (last week of august).

stompzilla:  You can always get ONE attack where you set it up (the first time you do it to someone).  To be able to repeat it, make something else a bigger immediate threat (like that Manta advancing up the middle), and all of a sudden you've got an opening to set up the bounding overwatch advance.  In Warmachine, it's called order of operations.  All the nasty, 'unstoppable' combinations have to happen in a certain order, and if you get one unit out of order, the entire attack can fall apart.  Lead the attack with an AMHC, or a co-fire with Tetras, AMHC, and Stingrays to plaster someone, make it look like you're hitting one side, when you're really about to hit the other flank in the next turn.

Tau really act like the old Japanese set-piece engagements, with multiple maneuver forces.  When it works, it works brilliantly, but if someone gets inside your decision loop and makes you dance to his tune, you're screwed.  It's all about imposing your plan on the enemy, not reacting to the enemy's plan.

I've noticed that a lot of people tend to think defensively (even the US Army, as a friend of mine in OCS pointed out).  You think, 'hold point X to keep doing Y,' instead of 'take point X to allow Y to happen.'  Once you start thinking in terms of 'do X to allow Y,' Tau start getting really nasty (as do Marines and Eldar, the other offensive forces in E:A).

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Hey, I have been testing FF4+ FWs to see how they play and I intend to keep trying it out.

My feeling so far, in admittedly limited attempts, is that it opens up further tactical choices for the Tau player and gives the FWs a clear role.

Seems that for some maneuvering to shoot or overwatch is just not an option.

I've posted another Tau playtest... this time using, essentially, only infantry; primarily Crisis Cadres, Fire Warrior Cadres, and Stealth Groups.

Check it out!

Space Marines vs Tau

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Well, you can fight and win engagements with Tau, even with FW.
Asking for FF4+ is just begging to make it a no-brainer and to introduce tried-and-true tactics that work with a couple of other armies, SM and Eldar have already been mentioned.

In my view the very idea of the FF restriction on Tau is to go for another tactical/gameplay approach: By insisting on having cheap, numerous FF assault infantry for Tau you are doing E:A a disservice: Implicitly, you are suggesting that the only viable option to shift the enemy from an entrenched position is via an Engage action.

It isn´t.

The Coordinated Fire rule was explicitly introduced to make up for the Tau´s limited assault capabilites, and firing attacks heaved on Inf units.
If, if this is insufficient to clear a position, that´s the place for tweaks, but not making Tau capable of engaging like everyone else. People who want to play a fast,hard-hitting skimmer/assault army with sleek looks should really consider Eldar instead.

FW have a role: They spearhead the advance, preventing enemy assault infantry from closing in and enemy line infantry from staying in place: You cannot comfortably rush into their OW fires and you cannot comfortably camp in their Sustain range.

Shifting the enemy requires crossfiring and possibly some Submunitions missiles, standard combined arms approach.

There is nothing wrong with FW: Eight stands of Armour 5+, FF5+, 2x 30cm AP5+ infantry at a modest 200 points can be made to work easily with the right tactics, if they (consistently!) weren´t taken then this would, IMO, say more about the rest of the list (being undercosted/overpowered) than about the FW.

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I totally agree with Irondeath here. The limited number of Tau bat-reps I have seen (including Chroma's latest one) *never* use co-ordinated fire. This is supposedly one of the hallmarks of Tau strategy along with their use of technology to make up for other deficiencies.

I believe there are two reasons for this, firstly the stats for individual formations are being tweeked to make them deadly by themselves (witness the ongoing debate here), and secondly because the concomitent price increases of the formations reduce the available activations in an army to the point that discourages Tau players from using multiple activations in this way. Put another way, I think development is generally going in the wrong direction by trying to increase the power of individual formations.

While I applaud the effort being put into developing a niche role for the FW, the fact remains that the entire debate is predicated on using a single formation to achieve battlefield results, rather than a combination of multiple formations and multiple activations.

IMHO the Tau *should* be a high activation army that relies on co-ordination for its success. It *can* have awesome firepower (through co-ordinated fire), but is weaker if assaulted. I even suggested a modified form of commander here to permit the Tau to perform *co-ordinated actions* to achieve these aims. To do this, you simply reduce the size of infantry formations while retaining their current stats, permitting an army of somewhere between 11-13 activations, with an average formation cost of around 200-250 points.

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Ginger:

It's worth noting that Coordinated Fire is the (Admittedly more flexiable) analgoue to a Combined Assault, something that doesn't actually occur too often in games.

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Possibly because we don't have an army for which it was a defining schtick.

To elaborate a bit: if we want to have Coord Fire as Tau signature rule, they should be gently forced to rely on it. In such case if Tau are competitive enough without using Coord Fire (as it seems that they are) then they should be weakened somewhat so that they need to use that rule to be as strong as they can be (and the rule tweaked to give them that boost). If this isn't going to happen then the special rule is just a waste of space and word count.

vytzka has understood what I was trying to say. Combined assault is used extremely rarely because it requires the formations to be intermingled beforehand. This usually allows the enemy to pre-empt the attack breaking two unactivated formations and gaining a significant advantage in the battle.

Tau Co-ordinated fire does not have this significant weakness because there is no such restriction on the distance between the formations. However it is still not used mainly because Tau formations generally do not need to, and because doing so rapidly reduces the Tau activations putting them at a disadvantage.

As vytzka suggests, reducing the Tau infantry formations slightly in size and cost would encourage the use of the rule and produce the desired characteristics in the army. Using *Co-ordinated action* would additionally permit distant formations to make a combined assault on a single target producing the effect desired by the "assault proponents", while reducing the popcorn effects of cheap activations.

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I think I've used it once in all my recent Tau games... and that was against a Reaver Titan.

I don't use Co-ordinated Fire because, most times, it's far too much overkill for the Tau formations involved... most Tau formations can throw out so much fire, that it's unnecessary to "double/triple up" in one activation...

If basic formations were slightly less capable on their own, there'd, plausubly, be more of a need for Co-ordinated Fire... but now, it's almost an unnecessary special rule.

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Thinking about it the co-ord fire is the ability that encourages gun lines. Small formation doubles forward to markerlight a target for the co-ord guided missile barrage. If it were to go (or require the 5cm range like combined assault?) static gunlines would become far less effective/appealing.

"Those units can order up to 2 other formations that have not taken an action this turn, and which are not broken, to follow their own formation when they take an Advance, Double or Sustain Fire action, as long as all the formations have at least one unit within 15cm of the formation containing unit calling for coordinated fire"

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